Kenyans, discard these bad manners

This week, I intend to take a break from politics and comment on something else, for the political shenanigans have become extremely tedious and predictable, though for sure, there are those who revel in such things and only come alive during election campaign periods.

Instead, there are some things that we ordinary folks do that are not only a source of great annoyance, but which are completely illogical. One of them is the way we treat the event of death.

And I am not talking about the common habit of praising well-known thugs during funerals, though most of the utterances are mere fibs. I am not even talking about those communities that hold weeks-long wakes so that the villagers can send off the soul of the dead in a fitting manner by carousing and engaging in song and dance. Some of these things are customary and if they do not end up impoverishing the bereaved families as sometimes happens, they are, on the whole, quite harmless.

No, I am talking about the habit of whole villages travelling early in the morning to the mortuary on the day of burial ostensibly to view the body and accompany it to the cemetery. Some of them are probably silent haters who need the evidence that the person concerned is really gone forever. 

Death is a very personal issue – everyone eventually dies – and it should concern only the immediate and extended families. I fail to see, therefore, why it should concern people who hardly ever spoke to the subject when he or she was alive. Why should the family of the deceased be made to hire vehicles for ferrying villagers to the mortuary?

Proper send-off

What is even more irritating is that the same busybodies were nowhere in sight when the deceased was ailing, probably hospitalised for lengthy periods of time. 

How do you go to mourn somebody for whom you had little time when he or she was healthy? It’s time we discarded such ritualistic pretensions. Nobody here is trying to dictate how and when people should mourn the dead, and it is true that a proper send-off brings about some closure especially for the immediate family, but let us do these things without too much fuss. 

It’s no wonder a rising number of people are choosing to be buried by family and a few friends only, or even to be cremated without many witnesses around.

On a different note, how many people have found themselves in a WhatsApp group set up specifically to raise funds for this or other important social function like a bride-price ceremony (ruracio), circumcision, graduation from nursery school or those seemingly endless fundraisers for church-related projects? 

The problem is not the app itself; the problem is that sometimes you find yourself in a group of total strangers chatting endlessly on matters that are totally meaningless to you.

And you cannot even leave the group because to do so would offend the sensibilities of the only one in the group whom you may know and who must have included your name in the first place. That is egregious invasion of privacy and it should be discarded. If you have my number and you want me to attend any of your functions, just call me directly. It’s a lot more courteous. 

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In my corner of the woods, folklore goes that an elderly lady at the Kenya Power substation in Githunguri town has the onerous duty of listening to the atmospheric disturbances that produce thunder and watching for any sign of lightning in the distance all day.

Once she detects any of these signs, she promptly switches off power in the suspected region. Since she doesn’t exactly rush with the same alacrity to restore electricity when the danger is past, those poor areas suffer prolonged outages lasting days.

I don’t know how true this account is but it does raise questions about why a blown transformer fuse should plunge a whole village into darkness for three days.

This is what happened this week in a tiny hamlet of Gatundu South where I was a victim. It wasn’t the worst that has ever happened to poor electricity consumers countrywide, for reportedly, some outages last weeks without any explanation from the supplier. 

However, some things don’t make sense at all. In a densely populated area like my ward in Gatundu South whose electricity uptake is higher than average nationally, why should KP technicians have to travel to Githunguri, more than 35 kilometres away, to rectify any fault, however minor?

The irony is that there is a much smaller substation barely three kilometres on the next ridge that serves the famous Ichaweri where the lights never dim regardless of the weather. There must be cogent reasons for this seeming incongruence but since few answers are ever forthcoming, people are left in the dark to speculate on the probable reasons and to hate on the mysterious ghost lady of Githunguri whose mission in life seems to be to make life miserable for power consumers of Kahuguini and surrounding villages.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]